Saturday, January 28, 2017

As class advisor of Class of 2019, we were responsible for putting on this year's Winter Formal. Our theme this year was Northern Lights, and I was so happy with how everything turned out! We have a pretty fabulous group of officers, all of whom put in a lot of effort to make this such a successful event. All of the girls were there all day for set up, and all but one officer was able to attend (Kylie had a recital in the evening, but put in a long morning with us before she had to get ready for her event). Marcos, my partner in crime (and work hubby--ha ha!) and I love our Class of 2019 officers!

Friday, January 20, 2017

Today, perhaps more than any other day, the
world will be watching our nation. The world will be watching us. With
baited breath, we wonder what this new administration will bring. Now
more than ever, what we do matters. How we respond
matters. Don't wait; act. Silence is tacit agreement. Speak. Loudly
and often. We cannot allow our voices to be crushed under the weight of
this Brave New World. If we don't exercise our democratic right to
raise our voices and let our representatives know our hearts, we will
lose ground. We already have. The march to pick up lost ground begins
now.

In his inaugural address, Trump said, "The time for empty
talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. Do not let anyone tell you
it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and
spirit of America."

Now arrives the hour of action. Yes. Now, and
for the next four years. Let's be willing to put in the time and the
energy to show what the heart and fight and spirit of America is really about.

Monday, January 9, 2017

On Sunday night at the Golden Globes, Meryl Streep was given
the Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award and gave what quickly became a
polarizing acceptance speech.In her
speech, she exhorted everyone to hold those in power to account on this
monumental eve of the changing of the guards in the United States.She used her spotlight to call attention to
our duty and responsibility to question and speak out where we see injustice
and to expect our leaders to comport themselves with dignity and compassion.In part, she said,

“This instinct to
humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone
powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives
permission for other people to do the same thing.Disrespect invites disrespect, violence
incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we
all lose.”

The polarizing aspect of this speech is appalling to me.I find it difficult to take exception to the
idea that we should expect the powerful to use their powers for the benefit of
all, rather than to use that power to bully others.There is a flurry of conversation, however,
about the fact that those ‘Hollywood types’ have no business politicizing an
entertainment forum; they should just, in essence, ‘shut up and just do their
jobs’.How is it, by virtue of their
chosen profession, there are people who seem to have decided that they are not
entitled to their opinions?That they are
not entitled to share their opinions?I am not a politician; I am not a legal
analyst or a foreign or domestic policy expert.I have never held a public office, and yet I am an intelligent,
knowledgeable individual with valid opinions and insight.The stakes are high, and my life, and the
lives of all Americans, will be impacted by decisions and actions of our
President-elect.Therefore, my opinion
matters.My voice matters.Why is it that someone like Meryl Streep, or
even Jimmy Fallon, Golden Globes host, isn’t entitled to share their opinions
as well?Streep has a career as an
actress; it’s not her sole identity.It’s
not the only thing about which she should be allowed to speak.She is a citizen, just like you, just like
me.She happens to have a very public
forum in which to share her opinions and to use her power—the power of access
to audience—to speak to and for those who don’t have that privilege.She is, in fact, modeling exactly what she
wishes to see in the leader of her country:to use her power to model the way in which power should be used in order to benefit others who don’t have a
voice.She did so with grace and
clarity, without resorting to name-calling.Trump, on the other hand, took to Twitter, which is apparently his
primary means of communication, to call Streep “one of the most over-rated
actresses in Hollywood” who is a “Hillary flunky who lost big”.

Streep’s speech was a bold one, because as she was
exercising her First Amendment right of free speech, she knew that she was
risking losing fans who did not agree with her politics—movie goers who have
the right to spend their hard-earned cash at the box office and to speak with
their dollars.She knew that she risked
alienating those who did not agree with her views—and she did it anyway.We HAVE to be willing to put ourselves on the
line and speak up for what we believe in, lest our silence be taken for tacit
agreement.So as our President-elect is
pushing forward confirmation hearings on a slate of appointed officials who
have not yet completed the standard ethics review process, and as Senator Paul
Ryan is pushing to defund Planned Parenthood, effectively limiting access to
reproductive health and cancer screenings for people who are historically
underserved and underrepresented, it is our responsibility to speak out, call
our government representatives, and to use our forums no matter how big or
small, to continue to hold our government to account.

Tomorrow (today, actually, but I haven't gone to bed yet so it's kind of tomorrow) I go back to school after a two week’s vacation for
Christmas.As usual, I walked a fine
line between allowing myself to relax and running through the whole host of ‘projects’
that by necessity take a back seat during the school year.As usual, I didn’t do enough of either.I’m not going to beat myself up, though; I’ll
just keep trying to carve out small bits of time during the semester to take
that down time and to chip away at the house projects so that when spring break
comes around, I won’t feel that everything has to be done RIGHTNOW.For the first time this year, my school
district ended our semester at Christmas break, so we come back from vacation
to a clean slate for second semester.For the last two days, my head has been spinning with all the things I
want to change and adapt for my students over the coming months—how can I reach
those kids who struggle to stay connected, how can I continue to try to make
the curriculum both relevant and interesting to the kids, how do I help those
kids who need a little (or big) push to help motivate them….I never sleep well the night before I go back
to school after some time off.Looking
forward to seeing my kids again and kicking of the second half of the year!

Monday, January 2, 2017

Schedules were pretty tight this year, so our Christmas with the cousins happened after the New Year. It doesn't matter to us; celebrating Christmas is about getting together with family no matter when it happens. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the trip:

Sunday, January 1, 2017

My default setting is optimism.I’m a silver-lining kind of gal.2016 tested that outlook in a number of
ways.Within my family and within my
group of friends, there was personal, financial, and emotional upheaval.With each new challenge, each new obstacle, I
tried to remain hopeful.I am practiced
at seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.And for the most part, I have retained that ability.

The end of this year, however, nearly had me at my breaking
point.The election was disheartening,
depressing, maddening—something that found me in new territory.It’s hard for me to see the silver lining
here, to be honest.The divisiveness and
ugliness I’ve seen speaks to a dissatisfaction that has been given voice in an
environment that is designed to nurture and grow that ugliness.It’s a vicious weed that threatens to overtake
and choke out anything else if we turn our back on it for even a moment.

Does this sound alarmist?Perhaps. But what I have realized is that as difficult as it may seem on
any given day, we just can’t give up.We
can’t turn our backs and hope for the best.In a world where hate is being cultivated by the man who will soon take
the helm of our country, passive hope is simply not enough.The only way we can combat the ugliness we
see is to actively seek out opportunities to create positivity and unity.Speak where you see injustice.Give voice to the voiceless.Give time, money, and energy to organizations
that promote social and financial benefit to the underserved in your
communities.Make sure your local,
state, and national representatives know your mind and hold them accountable to
vote your conscious as your representative.Encourage everyone you know to do the same.

This is our new year, and the beginning of a new reality in
the United States.This is the time of
year it is customary to make trite and predictable resolutions that generally
end in broken diet promises to the self by mid-January.I am proposing this year that we need to make
a different kind of resolution, and be vigilant about keeping this promise to
ourselves.Hope is nice; hope is a
lovely sentiment.But now, more than
ever before, we need to resolve to make that hope action, and not rely on
passive good feelings.We tried that in
November; it didn’t work.If we reframe
what hope looks like, we have a chance at change—a chance to right the
ship.We have the ability to find the
light at the end of the tunnel.I have a
very strong feeling that the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t going to come
to us; we’ve got to diligently pursue it.I’m not ready to give up my optimism.I’m just going to have to resolve to work harder make it an active
movement.Perhaps that will result in a
silver-lining after all.